Radar tower

Radar tower on the North Sea island of Langlütjen I
(2012 aerial photograph)

A radar tower is a tower whose function is to support a radar facility, usually a local airport surveillance radar, and hence often at or in the vicinity of an airport or a military air base.

The tower typically has a continuously rotating parabolic antenna. Often the antenna is protected from the weather by a radome and is thus not visible from the outside.

For regional air traffic control, en route radar installations are used; for example there are six of these in Germany, erected at selected sites. The data from these radars is fed into the civilian RADNET system and transferred to all civil and military control centres.

Ideally a radar tower is built on a high spot in the terrain, because this reduces the angle of elevation and thus increases the range of the radar device. In the absence of a suitable high spot, radar towers are used.

In Germany the operational command posts of the Luftwaffe use the Bundeswehr radar towers for the stationary radar sites of the operational command areas.